<p>Nancy Pelosi trying to explain the failure of the ACA website to Jon Stewart. LOL</p>
<p><a href=“The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - TV Series | Comedy Central US”>The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - TV Series | Comedy Central US;
<p>Show me the math catahoula. It is easy. Show me the math why sign ups are a problem.</p>
<p>Around 24 percent of sign ups so far are in that 18 to 34 age group or whatever that sweet spot is. </p>
<p>Did you read what Wellpoint said? </p>
<p>Whether an actual 24% vs whatever was previously calculated as crucial, is enough to float the boat isn’t really the point - I wasn’t speaking of sign ups, dstark, but rather how many of those who pay the initial, drop out.</p>
<p>They won’t be the same exact people that get the car insurance card and cancel but the demographics will overlap.</p>
<p>The 24% number is a disaster. They need 40%. </p>
<p>It is ok catahoula. I am talking to you as a fellow human being. The numbers are ok. There is not going to be a major financial issue if a bunch of people dont pay. If you read that there is going to be a macro problem if people dont pay… Look and see how much the damage will really be. And write down the author’s name so you can remember that the author is a bs artist.</p>
<p>I try not to worry about things that are not going to be issues. I was meeting a friend today for lunch and he was 10 minutes late. Is that really an issue? No.
The paying issue isnt an issue either. There just isnt enough of a loss there. </p>
<p>So… If you want to spend your time worried, that is up to you. I looked at the issue and there isnt an issue.</p>
<p>I’m more inclined to agree with pooch on the float, dstark. Aging society, boomers retiring, caring for the old and worried isn’t inexpensive. Seat of the pants reasoning would be that almost every small-time worker bee would be needed, since their contribution was kept as low as possible (to encourage participation). </p>
<p>That this was supposedly built-in and counted on runs counter to the idea that it’s suddenly irrelevant how many opt out and pay the fine. Upfront or down the road.</p>
<p>If you’ve any links to the new and relaxed outlook on premiums spiraling, please post them.</p>
<p>The issue is whether it will matter in the short term (one or two or three years) not the long term. In the short term, what matters is what the insurance companies priced for. If they expected a sicker, older set of subscribers than the general population, which apparently they did, then getting a sicker, older set of subscribers is not a problem in the near term.</p>
<p><a href=“Obamacare prices may lure employers to exchanges”>Obamacare prices may lure employers to exchanges;
<p>The above may not be good for my daughter since she helps place group plans, but the exchanges may save some groups money.</p>
<p>Hopefully, this is a start of a trend.</p>
<p><a href=“Two Obamacare exchanges see more health insurer competition”>Two Obamacare exchanges see more health insurer competition;
<p>Catahoula, you are worried and you dont know the potential losses? Maybe GP can help you. 
You are telling me there is a problem and you dont know the magnitude of the problem? Seriously?</p>
<p>I figured out the numbers in my head. Maybe you can too. I think you can if you actually thought about it. But please dont tell me there is a problem when you dont know. </p>
<p>There is a study. Done by the Kaiser Foundation. I dont have the link. I dont need it. ;)</p>
<p>dstark,</p>
<p>So are you saying that the mandate was unnecessary? </p>
<p>No… I am not. </p>
<p>The more healthy people that sign up, the better for everybody in the pool.</p>
<p>There is a cost if only 24 percent of young people sign up.</p>
<p>Before people complain, they should know the cost. </p>
<p>I am waiting for one of the complainers to tell us the cost to those in the pool if the pool is made up of 24 percent yoing people instead of 40 percent.</p>
<p>“Loss management.” Built into every good business plan. I think it may be considered part of general overhead. Helped a friend in the banking insurance/risk management business- all interesting, how they uncover various issues that could crop up.</p>
<p>At some point, though, it’s no longer enough to keep saying, yes, this “could” happen, omg. “Yes it could and yes it could and so and so agrees that, yes, it could. Or will.” You have to move to the next step, assessing the likelihood and fleshing out plans for the response. To my way of thinking, this is already in dstark’s thinking and approach- and CF’s, maybe some others. And I, too, would bet the insurance companies are aware of these risks, have assessed them, and have incorporated those projections into their analyses.</p>
<p>Yes, of course they have. The taxpayers will be forced to bail them out. It’s already in the plan.</p>
<p>dstark, you’re making stuff up. The 24% number is a big problem. Nowhere in any of your links does it suggest otherwise.</p>
<p>The Yahoo article said this: “California, which operates the nation’s largest state-run healthcare exchange, has 13 insurers”. This is bulls**t. Not one person in Ca has 13 plans to choose from. In my region, I have two.</p>
<p>“All of the plans with Covered California are really recognizing that this is a long-term play and are looking at things like benefit design, how do we improve the benefits,” Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange, told the same forum.</p>
<p>This guy is a pathological liar. If you want proof, I will give it to you.</p>
<p>It’s hard to assess an impact to premiums, when there are so many mitigating circumstances, dstark. Pointing out original assumptions are most likely going up in smoke doesn’t really require one to, though.</p>
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<p>While I’ve seen that reasoning a few times, fang, I’ll admit I still don’t think I understand it: pricing it for the sicker would also mean you’d run the risk of the pricing out the healthy that dstark said would be a great thing to have, wouldn’t it? Unless you mean the sick are paying (with subsidies) full freight? Which would mean the mandate wasn’t really necessary after all?</p>
<p>Lookingforward, Wellpoint priced their policies based on the 24 percent number. So there is no reason to raise premiums because of the makeup of the pool. Wellpoint is very happy with their pool.</p>
<p>We can get into that but for over 10 years I have been posting the numbers. It is getting old. I have 26,000+ posts. 
</p>
<p>I thnk it is time for catahoula, or GP, or Bay or flossy or whoever to post why there is going to be a disaster. Maybe they are right. Let’s see their numbers.</p>
<p>I dont want to see CF’s numbers or calmom’s numbers or your numbers. You arent the complainers. :)</p>
<p>Looks like dstark answered my question. WellPoint got 24% because they priced for it. </p>
<p>“Wellpoint priced their policies based on the 24 percent number. So there is no reqson to raise premiums because of the makeup of the poiol.”</p>
<p>Citation please</p>
<p>GP, I did already. Just google Wellpoint. </p>
<p>You guys have to pay better attention. Not to me…but what is happening…
</p>
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<p>Goldenpooch has offered, numerous times, the argument that the exchanges will fail if young people don’t sign up in proportion to their numbers in the eligible population. The worry here is that young people, who pay slightly more than their costs, are needed to balance out older people, who pay slightly less than their costs. So if not enough young people sign up, the argument goes, then the insurance company will lose money paying out all the claims for the old people who aren’t covering their own costs.</p>
<p>And this is a good analysis as far as it goes. But notice, it depends on how the insurers set prices. And insurers don’t set prices by assuming that all age groups will sign up according to their population proportion. Insurers make assumptions about which people are likely to sign up, and set prices accordingly. (Actually, there’s a nice little optimization problem there, because prices affect which people sign up, and which people sign up affect prices. But that’s a math problem that can be solved.)</p>
<p>So if Wellpoint assumed that 40% of subscribers would be 18-34, but actually 24% of subscribers turn out to be 18-34, then Anthem would be in a little trouble. Not a lot, because the younger age group only pays a little more than its cost, but they would be in trouble. However, if Anthem had sharp actuaries and analysts, and they correctly predicted that 24% of subscribers would be 18-34, then they would have no trouble at all. And Wellpoint claims that they got the mix right. Who knows if they are telling the truth, but that’s what they claim. (And they would have been complete idiots to assume 40%, so they probably didn’t. The customer service people at Wellpoint are incompetents, but that doesn’t mean the analysts are incompetent as well.)</p>
<p><a href=“Who's signing up for Obamacare?”>http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/13/news/economy/obamacare-enrollment/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/13/one-in-four-obamacare-enrollees-are-young-adults-thats-below-the-target/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/13/one-in-four-obamacare-enrollees-are-young-adults-thats-below-the-target/</a></p>
<p><a href=“Adverse Selection: Obamacare Exchange Enrollment Skews Much Older Than U.S. Population; Cost Increases Likely”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/01/13/adverse-selection-obamacare-exchange-enrollment-skews-substantially-older-than-the-u-s-population-cost-increases-likely/</a></p>
<p>"A recent article by Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton, and Anthony Damico of the Kaiser Family Foundation described an enrollment of 25 percent among 18-34 year olds as a “worst-case scenario,” estimating that insurers would lose money on these plans, because “overall costs…would be about 2.4% higher than premium revenues.”</p>